Nigella Lawson Quotes

Nigella Lawson shares witty, candid musings on identity, beauty and style that feel like a kitchen chat.

52 quotes

1. There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30...

2. While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.

3. My sister lives in New York and she was struck by how class-ridden the reviews were. Everyone had to mention that I'm posh. British people are obsessed by that. I said to John, 'I'm not posh.' Is my voice posh?'

4. It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

5. The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.

6. I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to.

7. Cooking aside, I am what you'd call a domestic slut. Cooking is really the only domestic activity I enjoy. I would do anything not to do the normal bits of household work - it's not one of my strong points.

8. It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.

9. I think cooking should be about fun and family. I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen.

10. I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.

11. I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere - cooking is the neatest thing I do.

12. But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.

13. I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.

14. I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.

15. I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

16. I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!

17. I don't take criticisms personally, which must be very annoying for people who mean them personally.

18. Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one.

19. It's not meant to be flirtatious. Listen, I don't have a presenting style, I'm just me. I don't have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious.

20. It wasn't really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I'll be happy. It wasn't what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I'm pretty bored of them, though. I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered to pretend I was.

21. ...obesity isn't caused by those who adore food. People tend not to put on weight through eating meals. I'd say it's people who eat non-stop.

22. If you looked up 'multi-tasking' in the dictionary, the words 'Nigella Lawson' would probably appear alongside.

23. No doubt there can be a shy, reserved side to Nigella Lawson - and some people interpret this as coldness - but it is not in evidence today. She seems flamboyant, if anything, and perhaps this is a persona she can slip in and out of (John Diamond once described her as 'a gay man trapped in a woman's body').

24. Nigella inhabits a strange world of extremes: she has experienced extreme tragedy, extreme success and has the advantage of extreme beauty.

25. Lawson's sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique, makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy.

26. Her descriptions of food can be a tangle of adjectives.

27. She has flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair. And then there are those cookbooks, which have become international best sellers. She has become enough of an icon stateside to be profiled last year in People and Vanity Fair.

28. We were stunned how petite she was in the flesh and she has the most beautiful skin. Not only that, she was nice, too. She arrived on time, no diva demands. She's gorgeous.

29. She's happy about what she looks like. She loves her food. Because she's relaxed her true beauty comes out.

30. You need a balance in life between dealing with what's going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.

31. You need a balance in life between dealing with whats going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.

32. But if you know that something has been really vicious, you don't read it, you don't let it into your head. What's damaging is when sentences go through your head and you burn with the injustice of it.

33. You cannot truly say you live well unless you eat well.

34. Glamour really has to do with good lighting, doesn't it?

35. Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.

36. I'm not much of a drinker. I'm an eater more than a drinker. So I feel that I don't have to wait to get a hangover in order to eat these.

37. If I could go into the woods and kill a bear myself, I'd wear it proudly as a trophy.

38. I'm not someone who's endlessly patient and wonderful.

39. Statistically, people who have been happily married and then widowed tend to remarry.

40. I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.

41. Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.

42. I know the crew so well, so I forget I'm being filmed. It's like cooking with a friend in the kitchen - you're talking, as you do, and maybe you're telling her about this wonderful way to prepare lamb chops - it's more natural, more honest.

43. I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

44. I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.

45. I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained.

46. I don't believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating.

47. Good olive oil, good butter, milk - they give food taste and depth and a richness that you cant reproduce with low-fat ingredients.

48. (In cooking), there is always room for careful tinkering.

49. I don't believe in low-fat cooking.

50. At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

51. I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

52. You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.